Ocean
by Graveflower
Summary: Yet another 'what happened afterwards' story. Angsty. Written so that I could get closure. Also to indulge my convictions that Jack and Ralph had a crush on each other (slight jack x ralph, more in ch.2, nothing remotely graphic.)
1. Ocean

A/N: My God! This ~wasn't~ written for school! I don't own LotF, but I'm working on a devilish plot to blackmail the Golding descendants, so we'll wait and see...  
  
I love all the boys, even Piggy, unloved as he is. I hate the shallow 'good vs evil'-theme interpretations of the book. I just... I don't know why I'm ranting like this, so on with the fic.  
  
  
  
Ocean  
  
  
  
  
The boat was sailing quickly. Ralph leaned over the edge of the rail and let the wind hit his face as they plunged onwards across the ocean. The naval officer was behind him, the moonlight glinting off of his uniform buckles, the giant orb hanging suspended in mid-sky overhead.  
  
The sky was a deep blue. It almost hurt Ralph to stare into it.  
  
"Ralph?"  
  
The naval officer hadn't spoken for some time. The young boy had almost lost the sense of his own name. Clumsily, he responded, turning and refusing to smile, but instead piercing the officer with a harsh cutting stare. He'd changed so much, he thought, his name didn't fit him anymore. But it was all he had left, almost, besides his life.  
  
"Ralph... would you like to tell the other officers what happened? They'll be waiting beneath the deck- the others will be done with by and by."  
  
Ralph didn't move. Slowly, then, his gaze bent back towards the unending ocean. So many times he'd stared over it's placid surface, he refused to believe they were actually crossing the void.  
  
Had they been chasing him?  
  
He couldn't think of it. In his mind, they were frozen in time, a photograph. Simon and Piggy were there, too.  
  
Were they gone? No. Angrily, Ralph spat over the side. They're there, under the water, their bodies eaten away by now. But their bones are still there, under the water. Never buried. Never prayed for.  
  
"Ralph..."  
  
"Yes." He didn't turn, and whispered his answer. Then he felt the officer's strong hand clasp his own and lead him down under the deck. For a long time, his vision seemed to be lost, and he was floating between worlds, not sure of the reality of anything. His hair felt cleaner, shorter, and his story spilled out effortlessly like water off his tongue. Only at the end did he realize that his face was wet with tears.  
  
He opened his eyes, and the room was empty except for four officers, one of them the one who had rescued them.  
  
"Then... there were two killed?" one of them asked gently. Ralph nodded. A savage, he thought, feeling their eyes burn into his brown burnt skin, and the filth that caked his face, hair, and body. I'm a savage.  
  
"One by Roger?" He nodded again, determination set in his stiff jaw.  
  
"And the other one- Simon- by all of you?" Another nod.  
  
"We went a bit mad," Ralph whispered, a glint in his eye, which then softened into another tear that rolled down his face.  
  
"And you were incited to by Jack?" the third officer added. Ralph looked up.  
  
"Who told you that?" he asked sharply.  
  
"Jack himself. Of course the boy was in hysterics," the officer went on, "and he may have been taking the guilt of the whole trauma on himself."  
  
Ralph stared long into the eyes of each officer, but they betrayed nothing. Finally, he nodded a fourth time.  
  
"Yes, we were led by Jack."  
  
The men said nothing, but gave curt nods to each other and then rose all at once. The first one stepped forewards towards the boy and led him to his feet.  
  
"You're free to go now."  
  
Jack.  
  
"May I see him?"  
  
The officer gave him a curious look. "See who?"  
  
"Jack."  
  
The officers glanced from one to another, and smiled. "If you wish. He's in the lower level of the ship, clsoed off. He wished to be alone, and we also meant to isolate him because of his... deeds. But I'm sure he'll be alright to see now."  
  
Ralph smiled. The dirt cracked on his face and darkened the creases in his skin ans he realized that he hadn't smiled in ages. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, he let his face fall limp again, and the semblence of grief fall over him. But joy had begun to stir- an almost mad joy, but in fact, it was the few vestiges of humanity still stirring in him that were coming back to life. Clinging to the feeling with a sort of desperate hunger, Ralph swallowed and followed the officer.  
  
Jack. He was seeing Jack. And not the tyrranical chief Jack, hunter and killer on the island, rampant and deadly. He was only Jack, the boy, the poor lonely boy (and how sad, Ralph thought, he must be. Slowly, the grief and empathy for him began to creep into his mind.)  
  
Only Jack, in a room on a boat, in that world goverend by adults which the boys had long ago forgotten to exist. Nothing to be feared, Ralph remembered the hunts- and the pained hysterical insanity which had claimed them all. Ralph too. All of them.  
  
Hanging his head, the officer shook him a bit, smiling encouragingly, and bustled him into the small dark cabin. There was a single porthole. The moon shone in.  
  
Jack was a huddled figure, wrapped in a thin blanked and hunched over on his bed. His dirty clothes were in a pile on the ground and there was a bucket of murky water beside him, sloshing in time with the rocking of the boat. He'd been bathing before, the rag still dripping in his hand. He ran it up his arm, then looked up and faced Ralph.  
  
His eyes gleamed in fear, and he jumped back, the blanket falling off. He cowered in the corner.  
  
"R-Ralph-"  
  
"Jack?"  
  
The prefect hugged his knees to his chest and curled his shoulders, sinking into the corner.  
  
"Go on."  
  
Ralph didn't say a word.  
  
"Go on, now. Hit me. Kill me, now, why don't you! I would have killed you! Just hurt me now!" Jack spat the words vengefully, and hot tears glistened on his face. His voice dropped.  
  
"I'm sorry, Ralph. I'm so sorry for everything I did... and... because... it was another world. I felt so different, like I was dead and alive at once. And I was in a nightmare, I was so- so afraid... so I did horrible things, I can't even- I can't even-" his voice broke, and he shivered a moment.  
  
"And I'm sorry, Ralph," he whispered, his eyes dropping to the floor.  
  
Ralph still didn't say a word.  
  
For a minute, all they could do was be in the room together. The feeling of walls all around them was like a dream, and they sensed each other across the cabin, just standing or sitting still. Finally, Ralph stepped forwards, and took the blanket up, draping it around Jack's shoulders. He sat beside him.  
  
"Come on, now."  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"We're going home, Jack. Take the blanket up, you're not on the island, and it's cold."  
  
Ralph's arm instinctively went around the other boy. He was wet. For a second, Ralph thought it was from the bath, but then it felt thick, sticky, and he smelled salt. Jack was bleeding. He'd scraped the skin off. He'd been scraping at the war paint until the skin came off.  
  
"We're never going home."  
  
Ralph didn't argue. They both looked out the window, lost in dreams and devoid of thought. There was no home to return to. Not because of the atom bomb, but because of the past. There was no family to return to. Even if they had been alive, no child would have hugged their mother, or shook their father's hand.  
  
Again their minds wandered, and their futur was a terrifying ocean of chaos, confusion. When it settled, there was only black. All they could hope for was death. But it was too soon, and they couldn't...  
  
"We don't belong there."  
  
"We don't belong anywhere..."  
  
"The island," Ralph said, "if we went back..."  
  
But he couldn't finish. He stiffly leaned his head on Jack's shoulder. The cold hardened leader had melted into nothing more than a boy, a boy with a child's name. Jack's arm came out from the blanket and shaking, grasped at Ralphs, and held it until they were both warm.  
  
"You were the only one with sense," Jack whispered, and Ralph lay silent, just shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, in silent refusal. Soon, the tears came again.  
  
"We got rescued after all," Jack whispered, "rescued because of the fire. You'd always told us to keep it lit. And now, thinking back, if we'd just kept it lit the first time, none of this wouldn't have ever happened. None of the fighting. Piggy, and- and- Simon, all of them, all for a stupid fire!"  
  
His voice fell again.  
  
"A stupid pig."  
  
Ralph's hand was warm on Jack's shoulder, and he rubbed his back tenderly, like holding a baby. Ripped out of their world, they were flung into another, then jerked back into the first... the whole island now seemed like a horrible mirage, too foreign to even accept. Ralph again looked over at Jack. The one who'd began the killing... spilled the first blood.  
  
His heart was so heavy. Ralph closed his eyes. How could he cope? Were he in that boy's mind, he'd want to die, and kill, and- and he'd be so confused. Too confused to even want to live.  
  
On instinct again, Ralph drew Jack closer, and this time faced him, so that Jack's arms wrapped loosely around his back, and he clung to him, one hand cradling the boy's head and clutching him so close as if to take his suffering into him.  
  
"Jack... oh, Jack..."  
  
"It's never going to be over, Ralph, it's here. It's still here. The-"  
  
Jack pulled back a bit, their arms still entwined, and stared fitfully into Ralph's eyes with a look a fixed terror. His lips trembled.  
  
"The beast."  
  
Ralph's eyes softened into Jack's, imploring him, but the terror was there.  
  
"The beast. It's here."  
  
Ralph couldn't say a word. The beast. Simon had seen the beast, screamed about it. He'd seen it before he'd died, in that horrible way. The beast had appeared to him, then devoured him.  
  
"I'll protect you," Ralph whispered, and Jack's lips still trembled. "I'll keep you safe. We're headed somewhere strange, with no family- and we'll be on our own, and afraid, but I'll stay here with you, Jack, I will. I will. And I forgive you, and I'm sorry- for everything you did, and for everything I did."  
  
Ralph smiled, a true smile.  
  
"You were a singer before you were a hunter. And you were head boy. You're more than a savage- we all are- and... we'll never forget. Never forget Simon, and Piggy, and the way the others were painted and screaming. Or the pigs, or the blood, or the beast. But we're away from there now. And going somewhere strange, but we'll be together. I won't leave you."  
  
A misted look of rememberance washed over Jack, and the terror subsided. The walls of the cabin seemed ever more present, and the distance of the island, and the strangeness of the destination."I won't leave you again."  
  
They fell against each other again, this time with mutual pain. For the insanity which had wracked them, and the horrors that had stained their eyes and dreams, they wept against each other.  
  
The slept on the ocean.  
  
  
~  
  
Maybe a part two coming sometime. Yes, my portrayal of Jack is odd, but since I've never met a young proud boy so overcome by freedom and circumstance that he was driven into a state of primal violence, I wouldn't know how he'd react once off the island. So... yeah. 


	2. Island

A/N: Back... although it's several months later... bah, anyways. Sorry for the long wait, after I finished Chapter One, I kinda liked it as a one-chapter bit. But then I got an idea... a wonderful awful idea... and yeah, so I'm back. That's all. Oh, and I'm listening to Jamiroquai so this'll be less twisted and kinda mellow. There's an odd plot twisty thing, and otherwise the chapter's pretty short.  
  
  
  
  
Ocean  
Ch2  
  
  
  
  
Forgiveness is such a stupid idea. There's no such thing as forgiveness, really, Ralph mused, his closed eyes sharpening the pungent smells of damp wood, cloth, and boy. There's no such thing as feelings, in the most primal existence there is. The one I was a part of... just a few nights ago... so close to death. Nothing's changed. Nothing at all.  
  
His eyes fluttered open, and the darkness was thinned by the light streaming in from the porthole in the wall over the empty bed. Memories of the ship returned, slowly, like the vague recollection of a haunting dream. Every morning he awoke to a new world, every morning he could not remember, or adjust to.  
  
He sat up, staring blank and palefaced into the monstrous shimmering moon that hung suspended and crystalline among the wavelike clouds overhead. Something was wrong. It smelled... it smelled like Jack, like fear, like sweat and like the island. A shiver passed through him. Alone in the darkened cabin began to echo in his mind. Alone in the dark. Alone and vulnerable. Alone with Jack.  
  
And the bed, empty felt empty, the close contact of Jack's curled back against his side feeling cold and insubstantial..  
  
Fear had fled. Irrational terror tremorred his senses for a moment, a long thin, wavering drawn-out moment that froze him upright amid the tangled bedsheets with his eyes slowly falling shut again and his muscles going limp and weak.  
  
Still alone.  
  
No one hunting you.  
  
It isn't that, no, it's not, Ralph. Die or no, it's the same fate. You're not afraid of anything like that, of death or harm or anything that specific. You're scared of the dark. You're scared of hunters in the night. And of being afraid like this for the rest of your life.  
  
Curled in a fetal position into the crook of Ralph's arm, Jack breathed slowly. The feel of their skin touching made Ralph tense at every realization. There was something so twisted and perverse about the island they had left that this... this regression into whimpering children, seemed so strange but normal. Normal. That was something Ralph could dream about. Nothing was normal anymore. It was vile to pretend.  
  
He wanted the island back. Sighing, he gazed out the porthole over the rolling plains of blue and saw the grey outline miles away. Lost forever, no one would ever believe them truly. It was a nauseating inhuman place, and they were natives of it.  
  
There was no leaving it, no going back. Ralph shifted, screwing shut his eyes to stop the tears, then stopped and sighed as they didn't come.  
  
The most primal of beings felt no emotion. There was no anger, no hatred, no vengence or forgiveness. There was only fear, and it was to keep you alive. He couldn't survive in the real world like this.  
  
"Ralph?"  
  
The sudden voice shot out in the airy darkness and the tension of the silence broke with an instantaneous spasm. Jack cringed, then smiled, his half-open eyes seeking out the other wiry boy. Their bodies had been so worn away, he thought.  
  
"Morning."  
  
"Is it even morning? It's too... white, I dunno, the sun's not up yet."  
  
They paused and Jack rubbed his eyes. Conscious of their presence, Ralph's arms drew shyly away from Jack and he could see his skin contract at the sudden cold.  
  
"Don't do that," Jack whispered. Ralph shrugged. The arms hung motionless for a second before tentatively returning.  
  
Warmth was an empty comfort.  
  
"You sleep o..." Ralph's moth was half opened in the meek effort of pointless chatter, but his words trailed off as he glanced up and saw the island. On fire.  
  
"Wacco," Jack gasped, and before Ralph could do anything, he had scrambled up onto his knees and was grinning wildly at the grey outline ablaze with red. Ralph rushed up beside him, clasping at the window ledge and breathing hard. Panic grinded at his senses- the island was burning? Again? There was no return, no return at all then.  
  
"We..." he breathed, "we can't go back, we can never go back..." he vision went a bit cloudy and he fell back.  
  
"What's that?" Jack's clear voice.  
  
"The island."  
  
There was a long pause. Ralph's eyes were closed now and he could feel solid gravity pulling him against the thickness of the mattress, his heartbeat slowing, unhindered.  
  
"Ralph."  
  
It was all over.  
  
"Ralph, it's just the sunrise. The island's not even in that direction, it's further East. That's just an uninhabitted place, Ralph, not our island. We left ours long ago. It's gone."  
  
Deny your words, Jack. I can't listen to you. You're making sense now. Just last night you were a wreck, couldn't think, couldn't move, like I was nights ago, and now you're back? Now you're better? Rational? Like I was at the rescue? Damn you then, I'm right back, you see, where I started. And you're just a step behind.  
  
This is a viscious cycle, only death could end it. Only my own death.  
  
Jack's palm rested with sudden tangibility on Ralph's back, a locationless point in empty void of sensation in his swimming head. They'll bring breakfast down soon. Jack can't eat upstairs, he has to be confined. I can leave though... I don't deserve to though... so many contradictions.  
  
"Go back to sleep."  
  
Whether it was Jack's cautious voice or Ralph's own clockwork mind, he obeyed, and the stinging of waking perceptions dulled almost instantly.  
  
  
***  
  
  
"It just kinda seems like we should... talk about it."  
  
"Yeah... didn't we do that last night?"  
  
"I dunno. I don't care."  
  
"It was pretty wizard though, when we first got on the island..."  
  
"Don't say that."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Cause."  
  
"Cause it went wrong, right. But... I dunno, it could have gone so right. It just didn't. And then..."  
  
"Don't say that either."  
  
"You said we should talk."  
  
"Yeah. I know."  
  
"..."  
  
"There's tons I don't really wanna hear anymore."  
  
"Me neither. I just..."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I dunno."  
  
...  
  
"Me neither."  
  
  
***  
  
  
They had been lying there for a long time, their eyes glazed over in blind absolution. Their minds skirted soundlessly the civilization they were headed for, the pain, the rejection, or the failure. Perhaps there would be no resolution. Perhaps the civilized world would just let them down and turn it's back on them.  
  
There was a loud bang that didn't seem to break their train of thought, which had diffused into a reflecting pool. Then there was a bit of noise from upstairs that they didn't care to check into.  
  
There were shouts.  
  
They had slept through screams though, and shouts were nothing.  
  
The boat had begun to rock.  
  
"Jack?"  
  
"Yeah Ralph..."  
  
Ralph slid from beside Jack, where they had been curled up to satiate their new constant need for human contact. He looked blankly out the porthole for a bit.  
  
"Ralph?"  
  
"The island!" Ralph whispered hoarsely, cutting off the other boy.  
  
"What about it?"  
  
He didn't say anything, but Jack was beside him in a second, and he could see it too. It was closer. Too close. Not the same island, a different one, but still the same looming cliffs and hanging vines, the same... thing.  
  
"Why is the boat going towards it?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Are they going to dock?"  
  
Jack stared, his eyes quivering, a hint of fear the only thing he could feel in his numbed body.  
  
"I think it's going to crash."  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Little cliffhanger, but not really. There's a difference, though, I'm gonna update this pretty soon, I think. Comparatively soon. I've got exams, so don't get mad if I don't for a week or something, but I know where I'm going with this. Hooray for plot. R&R if you wish, cause it's kind and nice. 


End file.
